Web Design

The first self-service supermarket opened back in 1916 with a chain of supermarkets called Piggly Wiggly, which are still open today. Since then, supermarkets have dominated the world with both small operators and big names like Walmart competing fiercely for consumers.

With small margins and new competitors popping up all of the time, supermarkets have had to optimise and improve their businesses constantly with every part of a supermarket meticulously planned and fine-tuned to maximise profitability.

Many of today’s biggest tech giants have now been around for over 15 years and through that time they have weathered the Dot-com bubble, Y2K, and now record valuations and a surging NASDAQ once again. During those years, web technologies and design standards have accelerated as fast as their businesses have evolved leading to some impressive changes to their website designs.

Watch the videos below to find out how each of these tech giants have split tested, optimised and improved their website layouts over the years to what we see today. These videos were made from help from the WayBackMachine, if you enjoy them be sure to check out my post from late last year as well which looked specifically at how New Zealand business websites have changed over time.

Of all the time and effort that is put into designing a website and using conversion rate optimisation to split test and improve it, generally not a lot of love goes into the thank you or success pages your visitors see after they have completed an action you want them to take.

It has been a long time since ive actually sketched on a pad of paper a wireframe or prototype and to say im thankful would be an understatement. A wireframe or prototype is essentially an outline of a website, landing page, app or other user interface such as software. The wireframe gives designers and developers a very clear guide on exactly how you want something laid out and gives you time to think about and plan the user experience elements of a design. This is vital if you want to maximise your conversion rates and user satisfaction.

In a rare move by Google this week they have launched a program which aims to kill or remove ads rather than promote them. In a company which generates almost all of their revenue from ads it is no doubt a controversial move internally which they have named ‘Google Contributor’.Continue Reading →